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Coinfloor To Raise Capital Meanwhile Nefario Has Left

Coinfloor, the largest exchange for sterling/bitcoin transactions, is set for a round of capital raising1 which will be used to launch a Bitcoin fund and enable customers to trade a wider variety of currencies for bitcoin. From Tuesday, Coinfloor will begin accepting customer deposits in USD, Euro as well as the Polish Zloty.

Poland's largest bank, PKO BP, currently provide Coinfloor with banking services given British banker fears over the legality of Bitcoin and the resulting difficulty businesses face in obtaining an account to conduct Bitcoin related business in the UK. But banking with PKO BP has allowed Coinfloor to service the growing Polish bitcoin market which Lamb remarked "has taken off significantly and is now more than double the size of the sterling market."

Plans for a Bitcoin fund will see Coinfloor store physical private keys in a secure underground vault. Coinfloor's plan to use multisig is meant to allay investor fears that the underlying asset of which they trade shares in could be stolen by hackers. Coinfloor believes there is an unmet demand waiting for regulated and listed Bitcoin investment products.

Notably absent from all of this is the infamous Nefario aka James McCarthy, who stepped down as CTO of Coinfloor in December of 2013, only to leave the company in May, 2014. Specific details as to why he left Coinfloor are unknown but in an interview with Wired in October 2013, Nefario said:

"Once you've been labelled a scammer, people are encouraged not to deal with you. But I need to move forward. Bitcoin needs to move forward."

When asked about Nefario's departure, someone alleging2 to be Mark Lamb posted to reddit:

Hi, This is Mark Lamb from Coinfloor. I just wanted to say that James did indeed contribute significantly to the creation and beginning stages of Coinfloor, however he is no longer involved in our company in any way, which is why we removed him from our website.

We have been committed to transparency and trust, demonstrating the first proof of solvency as well as being the only exchange to hold all funds in a multi signature cold storage wallet. Our CTO is Obi Nwosu, who we brought on for his 20+ years in the UK technology sector.

Coinfloor wishes to see Bitcoin succeed as a currency and a means of payment. We are big believers in the transformative potential that Bitcoin has to effect lasting change in financial systems and the larger economy. We will be doing an AMA in the next few weeks and would love to have all of you ask any questions, which we will be able to answer at that time.